Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Who was the "professional"?


This is real simple. Destroying public record is a criminal offense. I think its actually a federal offense which carries a maximum 3 year sentence.

Find out who had access to the servers by putting Anthony Jones' nuts in a very, very, very tight vice. Then put the "professional's" nuts in an even tighter vice until he/they (erh...ciber..cough..errh) cough(s) up Nagin.

I can't wait 'til that fucking smirk gets wiped off Nagin's face.

UPDATE: There may have been an intermediary between Jones and the "Professional(s)". Someone had to either:

1. Authorize the email deletion.

or

2. Secretly allow access to the email servers.

At the moment, City Attorney, Bob Ellis, is highly suspect considering his wife, Daya Naef, actually works for.....guess who? HSOA...yeah, I shit you not. Oh what an incestuous snake pit this administration is. Could Ellis have authorized the email wipe in order to hide Nagin's connections with contractors...i.e., HSOA, Benetech, Netmethods, etc.?

Ellis is quite the character....multiple blighted properties in Mid-city.....do all Ray's peeps own blighted property?

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

What if an city attorney attorney authorized this removal? What if that attorney has a wife whho worked for Meffert? Would that person want to destroy any evidence linking his/her links to the mayor & meffert?

Don't know just fueling speculation or rather just saying....what if.

Jason Brad Berry said...

Bob Ellis?

Anonymous said...

The question you have to ask is who directed Anthony Jones to allow Ciber to come in and "work" on the email server. Was Jones given a direct order from a city attorney? A city attorney or the mayor would have that force of power in this administration.

Well at least the Feds know exactly who did it thanks to Jones & two other IT personnel rolling over. Interestingly enough the report did not disclose how much information was left on the email #1 server for certain people. Did they delete other accounts or scrub other current/former employees/independent contractor email accounts?

This investigation is only in the top of the 3rd inning because there are other municipalities that are under the microscope in Louisiana.

Anonymous said...

LTC doing "forensic" work?

Lewis is an ex-IBM salesman.

Reade is a programmer.

Neither has the credentials needed to do this type of work - but the Feds will get it done.

Go ahead, check their credentials out for the work being done - they may have done more damage to the prospect of recovering data. Neither will have MS Exchange or Computer Forensic related certs.

Jason Brad Berry said...

They didn't do it themselves...the got Carrolton Technology Partners to actually conduct the forensic operation.

Anonymous said...

Reade owns Carrollton Technology Partners - a very small 10 employee shop here locally. I guess in the disclosures, they did not make that real clear.

Again - check credentials of Reade, Lewis and Carrollton Technology Partners employees, you will not find the experience needed to do this type of job, other than the ability to generate an invoice. (They can make a great web site though).

There is always a trail left in this type of issue, but you have to be meticulous and follow the bread crumbs left by the security mechanisms of the Operating Systems on the Servers involved - and know this, the data exists in at least three places, the Server and the Client Workstation - and the backups of the servers and workstations.

City Hall knew they were hiring lightweights.

Anonymous said...

She's the registered agent (with the mailing address the same as her office address) on the Louisiana SOS record for Picke Construction Co, the current name of Home Solutions Restorations of Louisiana:

Name: PICKE CONSTRUCTION CORPORATION

Prior Name: HOME SOLUTIONS RESTORATION OF LOUISIANA, INC. ( 9/24/2008)

Mailing Address: C/O DAYA J. NAEF, 1340 POYDRAS ST., #1800, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70112

Domicile Address: 1340 POYDRAS ST., STE. 1800, NEW ORLEANS, LA 70112

http://www400.sos.louisiana.gov/cgibin?rqstyp=crpdtlC&rqsdta=36014880D

Here's her info from the Louisiana Bar Association:

Ms. Daya Jennifer Naef
Primary Address: 1340 Poydras St Ste 1800
City: New Orleans

She's also hooked into "Associated Contractors," with Picke Construction as a member, at the same address:
http://www400.sos.louisiana.gov/cgibin?rqstyp=crpdtlC&rqsdta=36410253K

Anonymous said...

Interesting you mention Ellis' real estate holdings. They're tied into the NOAH scandal.

He has reapplied to knock down three properties in Mid-City he owns that were previously denied for demolition:

3916 Bienville: http://aca.accela.com/nola/Cap/CapDetail.aspx?Module=Permits&capID1=09BLD&capID2=00000&capID3=03969&agencyCode=NOLA

3920 Bienville: http://aca.accela.com/nola/Cap/CapDetail.aspx?Module=Permits&capID1=09BLD&capID2=00000&capID3=03970&agencyCode=NOLA

3924 Bienville: http://aca.accela.com/nola/Cap/CapDetail.aspx?Module=Permits&capID1=09BLD&capID2=00000&capID3=03971&agencyCode=NOLA

Remarkably, all three properties were "remediated" by Hall & Hall Enterprises:

http://www.wwltv.com/Noahlist.html

Hall & Hall Enterprises was the highest paid contractor in the NOAH fiasco and is owned by Richard Hall, former business partner of disgraced NOAH director Stacey Jackson.

http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/08/new_orleans_suspends_home_reha.html

Anonymous said...

Don't forget Ellis was representing Nagin at his deposition in the Active Solutions case.

Anonymous said...

>During the trial the mayor said under oath that he had deleted many of his e-mails on the instruction of his information technology officer, due to a lack of storage space.< - wwltv.com.

No, what a tech person would say is 'archive your emails Mr. Mayor, here I'll help you.' {That a VP or whatever for Cox at one time would not understand this is in itself a stretch, but anyway...}

So, what is wwl referring to there? Is there a transcript? An affidavit (because I don't remember Nagin actually appearing at a hearing/trial)? Nagin said 'he' deleted his emails? Or is that a mis-statement from wwl? Because I thought Nagin had previously said that he found out about the deletion after the fact?

So then the next question for the press becomes, was the tech chief Boyd or Jones? Because whoever the Mayor is claiming he gullibly believed (presuming what he says is true) would be the person who 'lied' and who would have the motive for lying. Right?

Thing is, presuming what he said is false, it may have been the tech chief doing it at the mayor's behest, or it could have still been someone else in the server room acting independently for Nagin or Meffert (or Ellis, or whoever, like White who also magically got multiple email sets delivered to her, or all of the above, take your pick).

About White, if someone can get emails from someone who has access to the server and copying emails off the server, well whoever that person is is also likely the same person deleting emails from the server.

Here's betting this took place November or very early December 2008.

There is the destruction of criminal records offense. But, as an aside, the mayor of Sacramento is under investigation of obstruction of justice for deleting emails, so it's remarkable this is happening somewhere else too.

It is weird how Ellis came out front instead of Moses-Fields when all this broke.

- Another story about Boyd: last year he showed up at an IG organizational and support meeting for Cerasoli (who was not there) one time. In a (small) room full of supporters for Cerasoli trying to figure out how to help him this guy voiced criticisms of the office and the supporters and walked out saying it was a scam. Really odd, screwey little guy is how he seemed to me. What the heck was he doing there besides, I guess, spying and reporting back (he pretty much said as much, he told everyone he was a city attorney).

Also, they could put Jones through the wringer as you say, but really determining who had the magic access could probably be accomplished by process of gradual exclusion:

http://www.cityofno.com/Portals/Portal98/Resources/organization3.jpg

http://www.cityofno.com/pg-98-33-technology-team.aspx

Anonymous said...

frank fradella needs to be leaned on (if he hasnt been). i am sure he could tell some stories. i had no idea daya naef's husband is a city atty. man, when this deal is all ironed out nagin will make morial look like a boy scout.

mominem said...

I'd imagine security on these servers is pretty lax. Meffert probably could have just walked in and done it himself and no one would have said anything except hello.

Look how easy it was for someone to make CD's of the Council's emails

Anonymous said...

Also, Richard Hall (of Hall & Hall Enterprises, who did the "work" on Ellis' Bienville properties) is not only Stacey Jackson's business partner, he's also her cousin.

Anonymous said...

I bet a few had remote access to the email server. So really anyone could have remotly scrubbed them.

Anonymous said...

Re: Anon saying >I bet a few had remote access to the email server. So really anyone could have remotly scrubbed them.<

Here's a question: was Meffert's security creds (badges, passkey, codes, passwords, etc.) ever revoked? Could the deletion process have even been done remotely?

Anonymous said...

Everyone needs to calm down and stop with the complicated conspiracy theories and remember this isn't spy thriller, these people in the city hall are not world class hackers and the more complicated you make something in the IT world, generally the easier it is to unravel. Why, because complicated stands out, you want simple, quick, clean and easy. Techs are always looking for add crap, you want something that will mix in with the crowd and make it unbearable to find it because it will be so tedious.

The wipe did not happen remotely, did not happen through remote vpn and trust me, the FBI are not wasting time looking at remote access.

They are looking for the backup tapes, because unless Nagin had all of the backup tapes erased, than there are copies somewhere. I'm also willing to bet that they already know who did it (Jones or Jones knows) and are busy looking for or talking to that person.

If somehow all the tapes are deleted, than Nagin is in for some serious bad days, because he had to tell somebody to do it and they aren't going to jail for wiping all of the mayors data.

Sit back, have a beer and enjoy Independence Day.

Jason Brad Berry said...

- If somehow all the tapes are deleted, than Nagin is in for some serious bad days, because he had to tell somebody to do it and they aren't going to jail for wiping all of the mayors data.

not so much

Anonymous said...

BTW, thank you all for your interest in the story. I wish I could tell it all, and maybe one day I will be able to. I can say for certain that the other shoe has not hit the floor yet but it will someday soon.

I like to think of myself as a programmer first, but my first IT training was in Novell and then in Microsoft. I have CNE and MCSE credentials - or did until I stopped paying their yearly rip-off a few years ago. Also, our current employee count is 27, not 10, we've done forensics in a number of bankruptcies and server crash scenarios and anyway we're not the only people working this stuff. Wayne Latour from Commtech (also MCSE I believe, probably other certs as well) and Golden Richard (certified forensics and professor of it at UNO) worked with us.

I try not to be a jerk about this stuff but I'm a little sensitive about it being as I've been called a lot of names lately for no good reason by people who've never worked with me.

So unless you can describe the purpose of IPM.Note or expound about Exchange's extensible storage system I don't want to hear about how I don't know anything about Microsoft Exchange. :)

-CR